The second season of Voyager is considered by many fans to be the weakest, and I’m not sure if I agree. But even if that’s true, I did notice that there was a strong theme of Reproductive Justice underscoring a few of the episodes.

It starts with Elogium. In this episode, the ship flies into the mating ground of some giant space slugs and this throws Kes into heat, many years before she expected to have to decide whether or not to have a child. Trekkie Feminist has a great review of the episode, but what stood out to me were that:

Janeway stated plainly that she will not institute a blanket ban on “fraternization.” If the crew wants to hook up, that’s their business

Janeway acknowledges that some members of her crew may have children. But again she’s not going to encourage this or discourage it. She doesn’t think this is any of her business.

Kes considers whether or not to have a child and concludes that just because she can, doesn’t mean that she should.

At the end of the episode we find out that Ensign Wildman is pregnant. She and her husband were trying to conceive before Voyager left the Alpha Quadrant and she has just confirmed it now. They’ve been lost in space for months, but the show glosses over this. Perhaps it’s because Wildman’s husband is Ktarian and that species has a much longer gestation period. Or maybe Ktarian sperm can live a lot longer than human sperm in fallopian tubes waiting for the right egg.

When Wildman comes to tell Captain Janeway, the tone is serious:

WILDMAN: I know this isn’t the best place to have a baby, but it’s all I have left of my husband.
JANEWAY: Well, congratulations, Ensign.

At first I wondered why they didn’t seem happier about it. But their serious tone is fitting. Being lost in a hostile area of space 70 light years away from family and a support network is not the best place to have a baby. Gushing and squeeing would not have been appropriate. The show takes this very seriously. Wildman’s baby is wanted and yet arriving under less than ideal circumstances.

In the episode Deadlock, Wildman gives birth, and there is a complication:

EMH: Push!
KES: Don’t forget to breathe, Samantha. Deep regular breaths. That’s it.
EMH: Cervical dilation is at ten point two centimeters. Prostaglandin levels are normal. Push, Ensign.
WILDMAN: You push, damn it! I’m sick of pushing!
EMH: I know you’re fatigued. Try to focus on your breathing. Remember the exercises we did. When you feel a contraction, bear down.
WILDMAN: Oh! Oh, what was that?
EMH: What’s wrong?
WILDMAN: A pain in my abdomen. It’s different. Sharp. Oh, God!
EMH: The baby has shifted position, and its exo-cranial ridges have lodged in the uterine wall. This is a rare complication, but it’s been known to happen in human Ktarian pregnancies.
KES: Can we reposition the baby?
EMH: No. Its spinal column is too fragile. I don’t want to risk nerve damage. If we don’t deliver the baby now, its ridges could perforate the uterus and cause internal bleeding. Kes, prepare for a foetal transport.
EMH: I’ve locked onto the baby’s coordinates. We’re ready to begin. Initiating umbilical separation. Energizing.
EMH: Congratulations, Ensign. It’s a girl.
WILDMAN: Is she all right?
EMH: The transport caused a slight hemocythemic imbalance, but we’ll stabilise her cell membranes with osmotic pressure therapy.

Although there was a risk to the baby (she born with something like decompression sickness) the Doctor and Kes did not think twice about saving Wildman’s life. She was in danger of dying and they saved her. Immediately. Without question.

Finally there is the matter of Seska’s assault on Chakotay. She tells him that while he was being held hostage by the Kazon, she took a sample of his DNA while he was unconscious and impregnated herself with it. When the baby is born she sends a message saying that she and the baby are in danger. This is clearly a trap. Janeway and Chakotay know this. Janeway tells Chakotay that it is his decision whether or not they decide to attempt a rescue. In his review of this episode, Jammer says,

But this is only true if you consider that Janeway’s only objective is military success. It’s not. She frequently places the heath and welfare of her crew, and the existence of other civilizations above their goal of getting home or winning battles. Even though she’s his superior officer, Janeway does not want to stop Chakotay from rescuing his son and having his chance at fatherhood – even though it might put them all at risk. When you include Chakotay’s rights as a parent her calculus makes more sense.

It’s clear that for Captain Janeway, the reproductive rights of her crew are a priority. One more reason why Star Trek is a utopian vision of the future.

A crisis has swept America. Hundreds of thousands have lost the ability to sleep. Enter the Slumber Corps, an organization that urges healthy dreamers to donate sleep to an insomniac. Under the wealthy and enigmatic Storch brothers the Corps’ reach has grown, with outposts in every major US city. Trish Edgewater, whose sister Dori was one of the first victims of the lethal insomnia, has spent the past seven years recruiting for the Corps. But Trish’s faith in the organization and in her own motives begins to falter when she is confronted by “Baby A,” the first universal sleep donor…

Sleep Donation is so engaging I couldn’t put it down. The universe is rich and easy to get lost in. A quick and very satisfying read.

Television
My favorite new show of 2014 is Broad City on Comedy Central. I first heard Abbi Jacobson and Ilana Glazer on the Ronna & Beverly podcast. I immediately became a fan of their hilarious web series. It was originally supposed to be on FX, but they cancelled the show and then Comedy Central Picked it up. I swear I remember articles at the time that FX didn’t know how to market a show about women to advertisers, but those links seem to have disappeared. But I’m so glad the show came to be. It’s the funniest thing on television.

As everyone has probably already seen Guardians of the Galaxy and Birdman, and Horns disappointed me because it took out almost everything that made the book was so amazing, I’m going to recommend everyone go see Particle Fever right now.

This movie is accessible to people with all levels of scientific understanding. I’ve never taken a day of Physics in my life and I didn’t feel that lost at all. “Why do humans do science? Why do they do art? The things that are least important for our survival are the very things that make us human.”

Unitarian Universalism
I have to share these videos by some of my fellow UUs.

Here’s “Love Reaches Out” a song written about the theme of this year’s General Assembly

The Reeb Project is a movement to restore the Voting Rights Act in the United States by All Souls Unitarian Church in Washington DC. It’s named after Rev James Reeb a Unitarian minister who was beaten to death while protesting against segregation in Selma Alabama in 1965. This summer, The Reeb Project held a protest, and it’s the first (and possibly only) flash mob video I will share on this blog.

This week the internet was aflame with the sheer idiocy that happens when you combine an ignorant misunderstanding of science with our culture of vicious misogyny.

Generally respectable websites like Alternet and The Telegraph were off and running with a study that claimed previous mates sperm could influence the future offspring of fruit flies. People got paid real money to write about this study as if it applied to human beings.

The immature eggs of newly hatched fruit flies ultimately develop a hard shell. The thought is that the development of the immature eggs can be influenced by non-genetic factors in semen but, once they have matured, the eggs are no longer susceptible to these changes.

Interesting indeed. But what I’m more interested in is why this study took off the way it did and why so many news outlets jumped to cover it as if it means something for people. Yes, it’s clickbait. But why is it clickbait? Why was this story so sensational?

Weinberg speculates:

Start with a scientific study that can be generalized to something people identify with or fear. Then lead with an eminently clickable headline about motherhood and promiscuity, striking fear in the hearts of the sexually active, raising concerns that the skeevy dude they picked up in a bar last year is actually going to haunt them forever through the face of their future offspring.

But I think it’s more than just fear that our exes can follow us, or somehow influence our future. The media found a way to push people’s buttons with the way they twisted this story, yes they pushed the “disgust” button, and the “eww my ex is gross” button, and even the “fear of cuckolding” button. But part of the reason these buttons exist in the first place is a deeper cultural stigma. There is a deep taboo about the way sex tarnishes women or makes them dirty. It’s tangled up with fear and denial of women’s sexual desires but its a slightly separate idea.

I’ve written before about how the disgust mechanism is a very old instinct. But this is is more than a general aversion to the “ickiness” of sex. The idea that the media was tapping into here was that sex in general and semen in particular makes women dirty in a way it does not make men dirty. In a way that a woman’s natural wetness doesn’t make women or men dirty. It’s odd to think of a substance produced by pleasure that creates human life as a contaminant (STIs aside). But we do.

We use the idea of semen in slurs like “cum dumpster.”

Abstinence only sex education is notorious for invoking the idea of semen defiled women in their rhetoric. A sucked on lollipop, chewed gum, or a cup everyone has spit into have all be used to represent a woman who has had sex. The students actual saliva makes an approximate substitute – but the message is clear, a woman is defiled by semen.

And so it should come as no surprise that at the mere hint that semen has more than a symbolically tarnishing effect on a woman’s body people will spiral into an absolute panic.

Weinberg wrote:

I even received an email from a pregnant friend that read, “Shit. Does this mean my kid is going to look like my ex?”

I wrote back to her, “Not unless you’re a fruit fly.”

We aren’t fruit flies. We’re people living in a culture that has a lot of fear about sex. Try not to let it ruin your day.

“Consent is clear, knowing and voluntary,” the SUNY rules will say. “Consent is active, not passive.

“Silence, in and of itself, cannot be interpreted as consent.”

Consent need not be verbal, but it must be unambiguous and mutual. “Consent to any one form of sexual activity cannot automatically imply consent to any other forms of sexual activity,” the rules will say.

Affirmative consent standards target far more ambiguous incidents in which one person initiates or escalates sexual activity in a consensual situation and the other person goes along — possibly because she or he feels pressured and doesn’t have the nerve to say no. But surely equating such experiences with rape is insulting to victims who are actually forced to have sex against their will — and generally to women, who are presumed under the new standard of being incapable of saying no to unwanted sex.

Young contradicts herself here. A person who feels pressured and cannot say no is being coerced, is being threatened implicitly.

Although this condition does not obtain with regard to any other crime you can think of, when it comes to rape, women are currently considered to exist in a state of perpetual “yes!”. This is because “yes!” is consistent with global accords governing fair use of women. Victims of robbery or attempted murder don’t have to prove that they said no to being robbed or murdered; the presumption is that not even women would consent to being killed. But because penetration by males is what women are for, if we are raped we have to prove not just that we didn’t say yes, which is impossible to prove, but that we specifically and emphatically said no, which is also impossible to prove.

Thus the need for an affirmative consent standard:

My wacky consent scheme flips it around. According to my scheme, women would abide in a persistent legal condition of not having given consent to sex.
…
Women can still have all the hetero-sex they want; if they adjudge that their dude hasn’t raped them, all they have to do is not call the cops.

It’s not that I don’t think women can say no. It’s that our partners should want us to say yes.

I’m glad that corporations want to give to charitable causes. But it’s hard to take them seriously when they are claiming to try and solve a problem they had a direct impact in creating without first doing as much as they can to stop filling our bodies and our environment with carcinogens.

“And, diversity is an integral part of our corporate strategy and vision with commitments to improve the diversity of our workforce,” Intel continued. “And while we respect the right of individuals to have their personal beliefs and values, Intel does not support any organization or movement that discriminates against women. We apologize and we are deeply sorry if we offended anyone.”

Oh ok, so a bunch of bullies convinced a giant corporation to drop some ads. I suppose that’s newsworthy.

The idea that corporations or journalists should need to expend any special effort to avoid “taking sides in an increasingly bitter debate” is ludicrous when you realize that there aren’t two sides here. There’s a bunch of trolls who are mad at a woman they don’t know for things that allegedly happened her private sex life as told by a vindictive ex-boyfriend so they’re throwing a temper tantrum on the internet. And there’s women who work in gaming and play video games who don’t want to be harassed. If you see these sides as at all equal, you are deficient in your logic or your morals. Or you’re just lying.

Political Flavors co-blogger Femataur and I were talking about a recent dust-up on Reddit that occurred after a woman posted about being asked to pay a cover charge at a New York City nightclub where her friends got in for free. The Red Pill subreddit was up in arms about the fact that this woman didn’t take the insult on the chin, because they never heard of men being comped cover charges so this is about equality! (As if they believe in gender equality.)

Here’s the text of our chat:

MissCherryPi: I am amazed by how much attention red pillers pay to women’s fashion. They really really care about it.

Femataur: Lol. God, they really really hate women. It reads like male-written erotica. Also a white blouse with strings and shit? Wat? I have no idea what they’re describing, but it doesn’t sound hot.

They just love policing everything they can about women.

I thought they didn’t like hypergamous women? Why are they advising women to artificially increase their value?

MissCherryPi: Maybe they mean a shirt like this:

or like this:

But if so, why does it have to be white?

And those ladies look like they are going for brunch or something. Not to a club.

Femataur: They are just really bad at describing what they want…Shocker!
Dudes don’t know what they want, start imagining porn scenarios.

MissCherryPi: I can understand if the guy is super into fashion and wants someone that also has that interest/taste, but I doubt these guys read GQ and Details.

Femataur: You give them too much credit

MissCherryPi: Well this is what I don’t get- I highly doubt these men are into male fashion, but they have all these demands of women.

Femataur: I also highly doubt they are into female fashion. They are into control. They think that ladies night is a gift. And all gifts come with a quid pro quo. They think that women who go to clubs are some weird pornified idea of women, like in music videos.

These dudes: women who aren’t paying their way need to dress like porn and earn their free drinks. Women who dress like sluts are basically asking to be assaulted. Aka: if you can’t pay for something you should be assaulted. Also financial empowerment for women is unacceptable?

September 9th is Primary Day in New York State. While primaries have lower turnouts and generally receive less media scrutiny, they are often very significant races that determine the policy direction a party takes. In some cases, as in the June Congressional primary between Rep. Charles Rangel and State Sen. Adriano Espaillat, it determined the person who will ultimately serve in the next Congress.

Next month’s primary is an important one for Democrats. Conventional wisdom holds Andrew Cuomo, Kathy Hochul, Eric Schneiderman and Tom DiNapoli will all be serving in Albany next year. What’s less certain is who will control the State Senate.

“Under Sen. Klein’s leadership, the [Independent Democratic Conference] has developed a clear, progressive agenda for New York’s working families.”

Odd that he didn’t feel that way before the raises, chairmanship, and 50 grand. Details…details.

This statement, though, makes September 9th so important for Democrats in New York.

Leaving the Democratic Caucus, led effectively by Sen. Andrea Stewart-Cousins of Westchester, in order to best promote a “clear, progressive agenda” is like Michael Bloomberg saying he could most effectively support gun control legislation by writing a check to the NRA. It just doesn’t make sense.

Maybe if the NRA offered Bloomberg’s staff raises and made him chair of a policy committee he’d reconsider. That would be benevolent, right?

No greater proof is needed to rebut the claim that the IDC and its alliance with the Republicans is promoting a “clear, progressive agenda” than three bills which never saw the light of day thanks to the “power-sharing agreement”: the entire Women’s Equality Act, GENDA and a ban on conversion therapy.

All of these bills should have passed, reflecting the substantial registration advantage that Democrats have over Republicans in New York. But they weren’t even given a vote on the floor. The reason they were not given a vote is clear: because Dean Skelos and the Senate Republicans would not allow a vote.

Why do Dean Skelos and the Senate Republicans have this say? Because they were given it by members of the IDC who were given plum committee posts and financial benefits in exchange for their allegiance.

As a result, any chance of progressive social policies passing in New York came to a halt.

You see, according to the “power-sharing” agreement, both “co-leaders” Skelos and Klein need to approve bills that go to the floor.

Democracy has a different definition in Albany.

What many people don’t realize is that the Senate Republicans have a second master: the New York State Conservative Party. Many of their members could not win without the backing of the Conservative Party, and rely on it for votes, GOTV and fundraising. The Conservative Party has been openly hostile to women, to minorities and to the LGBT community, and doesn’t hesitate to punish those who run opposed to its dogma. The party is closely aligned with the Catholic Church, including its belief on the role of women in society, the rights of said women, and its narrow interpretation of the Bible to meet its own agenda – regardless of who is harmed.

This can be remedied on September 9th, though. Many members of the IDC face primaries. Two races in particular can have a significant impact on the future of the IDC and the State Senate. In Queens, Tony Avella is being challenged by John Liu. In the Bronx, Jeff Klein is facing Oliver Koppell.

If the Democrats can regain control of even one of these seats, it will send a clear message that Democratic voters didn’t go out and vote on Election Day 2012 so that Dean Skelos could be left in power.

If you want the chance for a true progressive agenda on social issues, you need to express yourself on Primary Day.

The alternative is a State Senate that is to the right of Chris Christie.

This post is adapted from a service I led at my Unitarian Universalist congregation.

ReadingsThe Girl Scout Promise
On my honor, I will try:
To serve God and my country,
To help people at all times,
And to live by the Girl Scout Law.

The Girl Scout Law
I will do my best to be
honest and fair,
friendly and helpful,
considerate and caring,
courageous and strong, and
responsible for what I say and do,
and to
respect myself and others,
respect authority,
use resources wisely,
make the world a better place, and
be a sister to every Girl Scout.

Romans 12:9-13
Let love be genuine;
hate what is evil,
hold fast to what is good;
love one another with mutual affection;
outdo one another in showing honor.
Do not lag in zeal,
be ardent in spirit,
serve the Lord
Rejoice in hope,
be patient in suffering,
persevere in prayer.
Contribute to the needs of the saints;
extend hospitality to strangers.

***

When I was a child I remember hearing about certain things being “on the honors system,” a contest or an exam given to older kids “on their honor.” I asked questions about what this meant, and I developed my own definition of honor. It means to do the right thing, even when no one else was looking. This seemed like a big responsibility. I hoped I would be up to the challenge when my turn came.

In my own life I don’t often hear of honor spoken of much in the way I have defined it – doing the right thing, even when no one is looking, being true to your word and keeping your promises. A quick search of my own Twitter stream and of google news and I see the word being used in two ways – to describe an achievement, “It’s an honor to win this award.” And to talk about something that is almost the anthesis of my meaning – honor killings.

Human Rights Watch defines “honor” crimes as “acts of violence, usually murder, committed by male family members against female family members who are perceived to have brought dishonor upon the family.” According to a report by Dr. Sherifa Zuhar of Women for Women’s Human Rights, killings committed in the name of “honor” may be motivated by “a perceived violation of the social norms of sexuality,” or they may be “crimes of passion, wherein a husband kills his wife whom he or other family members suspect of adultery.” U.N. Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women Radhika Coomaraswamy has described “honor” killings as one of many practices that “constitute a form of domestic violence but have avoided national and international scrutiny because they are seen as cultural practices that deserve tolerance and respect.

“Motives for crimes committed in the name of “honor” have included: suspicion of adultery, premarital sex, or some other relationship between a woman and a man; being a victim of rape or sexual assault; refusing to enter an arranged marriage; seeking divorce or trying to escape marital violence; and falling in love with someone who is unacceptable to the victim’s family according to The Global Campaign to Stop Killing and Stoning Women! Even seemingly minor transgressions have been identified as the reasons for carrying out “honor” killings. In one case, a teenager in Turkey had her throat slit in a town square because someone had dedicated a love ballad to her on the radio. Although the victims are most often women, men and boys may also be targeted for crimes committed in the name of “honor,” usually when they are relatives, alleged partners, or “accomplices” of a female victim according to the Special Rapporteur Asma Jaha, Commission on Human Rights. Similarly, while men and boys are usually the perpetrators, women may be involved in, or supportive of, the commission of these crimes.

And so I must make a clarification as to what honor is not. Honor is not patriarchal violence. Honor is not chauvinism. Honor is not even chastity. Violence against women and other people who do not meet ancient codes of sexual purity is in no way honorable.

Honor cannot be bestowed upon a person or taken away by other people. It is a quality describing how a person lives.

Honor is not pride. When someone cuts me off in traffic and I slam on my horn and yell something not very polite, because of my own bruised ego, I’m not defending my own honor. I’m embarrassing myself in a potentially dangerous way.

The reason I wanted to talk about honor here today began when I was thinking about the seven principles of Unitarian Universalism. I was trying to decipher what meaning they had for me as a whole, and not just as individual precepts. And what I started to conclude was that they are about doing good for the sake of what is good. This fits so neatly with my girlhood definition of honor – doing the right thing when no one is looking. And it reminded me of that promise I made “On my honor, I will try…” I went back and looked up the Girl Scout Law and I was surprised at how it echoes our principles:

to be honest and fair,
to respect myself and others,

Justice, equity and compassion in human relations;

to be friendly and helpful,
considerate and caring,

Acceptance of one another and encouragement to spiritual growth in our congregations;

to use resources wisely,
to make the world a better place

Respect for the interdependent web of life of which we are a part.

I also looked to see what the Bible has to say about honor. There were many passages, but the one I read today echoes the message I’m trying to impart:

[H]old fast to what is good;
love one another with mutual affection;
outdo one another in showing honor.
….
Contribute to the needs of the saints;
extend hospitality to strangers.

So what does this have to do with how we live our lives day today? How is this concept relevant if it’s not spoken of in this context much anymore? And how does this specifically relate to Unitarian Universalism?
This past May I attended the UU Metro NY district conference, and I went to a workshop called “Getting to the Roots: Our UU Theology of Collaboration” It was led by Rev. Joan Van Becelaere a UU Minister in Ohio, that was described this way:

The Puritan ancestors of the Unitarian side of the UUA were much bolder than we commonly think. They envisioned an association of individual congregations far more collaborative and connected than commonly thought. The vision was actually quite radical. In these times of change in society and the world as well as in our districts and regions, can this collaborative theology at the roots of our organizational DNA help us meet our current challenges and give us a new perspective on what it means to work for the creation of the Beloved Community?

At this workshop, I learned about how many early American congregations were based on covenant. Covenant was and is “the matter and form of the church.” People who were living together in community also vowed to worship together in covenant. And the value of the covenant is the honor of it’s participants. It was their honor to keep their word and do what’s right for the community.

Today we are in covenant with each other in our congregation, and as a congregation with other UU Congregations throughout the country and the world. The value of our covenants is the strength of our honor.

We also see this at the end of our Declaration of Independence. The signers pledged, “our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor.”

Christian Red Pill blogger Dalrock published a hit piece on a woman journalist, and decided that instead of relying only on his incisive wit and literary talent, he’d also link to her personal photos and Flickr account. Because he wanted to ruin more than just a mediocre DS9 episode.

Ms Brink took to twitter asking people for help in reporting this post as abusive, and Adam sent out a tweet encouraging people to do so. And in case it’s not clear, I support anyone’s right to write or say whatever they want about whoever they want without fear of the government. But saying “Hey it’s not cool to link to naked pictures of a woman your are slut shaming” is not censorship. It’s exercising those same free speech rights to tell you that you are an asshole. Which you have every right to be.

But a simple, “This is not cool and it might violate Word Press Terms of Service” tweet has invoked the rage of the manosphere. And Oracle of Delphi, is it hilarious! They know they hate women, and they hate men who don’t hate women, but they can’t figure out why. And their reasons are delightfully contradictory.

Adam is only doing this because he hopes that maybe you will have sex with him.

Adam,

She is NOT going to have sex with you. Ever. You are quiche eating beta male. She is using you to try and tear down people who make her feel bad because she is a terrible person speading terrible advice. Stop what you are doing. You’re never going to get laid.

I spent my morning train ride laughing my head off at these comments, and trying to pick my favorite insult. I actually made my own from this word salad – “Hitler rabbit.” As in “Adam thinks men shouldn’t call women bitches. What a Hitler rabbit!”